


A Distasteful Duty

by AnneScriblerian



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Chan, Child Abuse, Dark, Multi, Non Consensual, Torture, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 11:51:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnneScriblerian/pseuds/AnneScriblerian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Carrows' depravity helps Severus keep an eye on his students.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Distasteful Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2011.  
> Response to the challenge to show a scene from the first part of DH from Severus' POV. This isn't a nice story. Severus, however, is as noble as can be expected.

Merlin’s balls, how Severus hated to see his students in the nude. He hadn’t enjoyed adolescence the first time he’d been forced to go through it, and the sight of awkwardly held limbs and developing secondary sexual characteristics brought it all back. It also brought back other unsavoury memories that he worked hard to repress.

He only inspected them out of a sense of duty. That was what he told himself to stay sane. It didn’t matter that it was the truth.

Alecto and Amycus Carrow had no idea that their fetish for taunting exposed children enabled Severus Snape to keep an eye on his students. Magical damage was easy enough to detect. Severus had more than enough experience with curses and hexes to discern what had been done to one of his students. His ability to diagnose magical maladies on sight probably rivaled Poppy Pomfrey’s.

It was harder to check for physical damage. The Death Eaters who had been placed in charge of the students of Hogwarts were too clever and too practiced in torture to mark the children where their Headmaster could easily see the evidence. Severus only felt assured that any one student was sufficiently uninjured to continue on at Hogwarts by getting a good view of their entire body. He couldn’t send every one of them to Poppy every week. And the Death Eaters would become interested if he began calling students into the Headmaster’s office and ordering them to strip. However, everyone expected such behavior from the Carrows.

The twisted sexual relationship the siblings shared seemed to satisfy Alecto and Amycus. Of course, Severus still kept a careful eye on them when they were “playing” with students. The jealous rage into which one of them would fly whenever the other even reached towards the cowering children protected the students better than even Severus could. All in all it was a rather perfect set-up for Severus to check on the physical well-being of the children in his charge.

That didn’t mean he had to like it. He attempted to remain dispassionate as he spied on the scenes of degradation. However, he was not actually a medical professional. And even mediwitches did not have to diagnose their patients while said patients were stripped, subjected to magical binding, and mocked. If any of them were able to maintain a healthy sex life after (if) they escaped from this “schooling,” it would be a miracle. However, Severus could not concern himself with that. His duty was to keep them alive and relatively whole. As long as their bodies were not violated, Severus refused to worry about their psyches. He couldn’t afford to worry. He had to remain vigilant.

Even if he had somehow had the time and energy to worry about such things as his charges' romantic future, he wouldn't. The Death Eaters and their children had all had their humanity stripped from them; why should these children be expected to remain innocent? Ironically, the Death Eaters’ children were treated far worse than Severus’s other students were. For them there were no appearances to keep up for families who had not yet chosen a side. Severus had often witnessed his Slytherins being used as playthings for his colleagues. Their own fathers would offer them up for the amusement of those whom they hoped to impress. There was rarely any physical sign of abuse afterwards.

The Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and Gryffindors whom Severus inspected through his scrying glass were covered with cuts, bruises, and piercings in painful places. They would survive those things. Severus had no need to inspect the bodies of his Slytherins. He had already seen them being destroyed in ways that left no visible signs. None that wouldn’t wash off in a hot shower, that is.

Once again, Severus thanked the gods that he had no children. He was spared having to witness their destruction. And his reputation as a veritable eunuch protected him from having to destroy the children of others. At least it protected him from destroying them with his body. His potions had enabled many a horrifying scene to unfold. He could never afford to show his disgust. Keeping his cover was his duty. He had to watch and do nothing. Just as he had to do now.

The children over whom he watched at Hogwats could survive this with their souls intact. Their pride might be destroyed, but a strong sense of pride was not necessarily a guarantee of a happy life. In Severus’s experience, quite the opposite was true.

As dispassionate as he tried to be during these sessions, Severus couldn’t help but be impressed by some of these non-Slytherin students. Not in a sexual manner, of course. Severus had buried his own sexuality so deeply that even a desirable, willing adult would not appeal to him as a sexual partner. He was certainly not titillated by abused children. But some of them showed such dignity under intolerable conditions that Severus couldn’t help but be impressed.

He would have liked to be proud of them, but it seemed that the students whom he had tortured the most (in his capacity as a professor) were the strongest. Perhaps they were strengthened—or hardened—by his discipline. It was tempting to take some credit for their fortitude. But Severus knew that he had absolutely no right to feel anything about any of these children. He simply needed to keep them alive. That was his duty.

Ginny Weasley, the last in a long line of Weasleys whom Severus had attempted to squash under his heel, barely seemed to notice that she was naked. She held her head high and acted as though she was being taunted by some silly children rather than two perverted adults who had complete power over her. Neville Longbottom kept a serene look on his face no matter what insults the Carrows hurled at him. Luna Lovegood, whom Severus honestly had not tortured that often but whose friends had been his primary victims, simply looked mildly interested in the proceedings. Seamus Finnegan was the worst. He insisted on laughing at the Carrows as he hung helpless before them. Severus often had to find an excuse to interrupt Finnegan’s “detentions” before the Carrows snapped and did something irreversible.

Severus hated seeing his students in the nude. But it was his duty. He had had to do many things that disgusted him. At least this was one he didn’t have to regret.


End file.
